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[game_nomad]

TRAILER



INTRODUCTION

Deadbolt is a 2d side-scrolling shooter

NOIRE

In the core of this game is its amazing atmosphere. This is a dark noire game. Events happen at night. Beautiful eerie art and jazz music. Even a black cat.

STORY

You play as the grim reaper. You are an elite assassin that is given missions by some mysterious God. Your job is to hunt down souls that refuse to give up life. Undead — zombies, vampires, skeletons.
A deep meaningful story explores mature themes — death, suicide, murder, drugs, sex, trafficking, assassination, betrayals, cannibalism, abandonment, emptyness

VIOLENCE

Awesome blood splatters, exploding body parts, ragdoll death animations. The weapons feel amazing. Blood and corpses do not disappear and in the end of a level it looks like the grim reaper had a busy night.

SYSTEM

Accuracy matters, but the focus is on tactics. Deadbolt has a lot of small systems you will learn and exploit.

GUNS

• Everyone, including you, dies from a few bullets. The first to shoot usually wins. So you search for a better position to attack from. The game feels a bit like Hotline Miami
• You carry only 2 guns and they hold just a few bullets. You often search for new weapons and ammo, manage resources and improvise
• Example for how position matters. Horizontal doors open and close. Vertical doors are places where you change our floor. Such entrances are perfect for shotguns.

ORIGINAL ENEMIES

Enemies have different properties and behaviors that require different tactics

• Some walk on ceilings, some plant traps
• Some have a weakness you need to exploit — for example one strong enemy type cannot open doors.
• No spoilers but this is really cool — some enemies can be attracted by a particular event they watch for and you can lure them into a trap. Other enemies have a weakspot somewhere else on the level.

SLIGHT STEALTH

Enemy awareness depends on light, sound, line of sight

• Light — Lights can be turned off or destroyed. Strong bullets penetrate walls and can break lights. On a couple of levels you can cut the power.
• Sound — Some weapons are silent. You can knock on a door to attract an enemy.
• Line of Sight—You can exploit it to backstab — you can use floors and vents to walk around the enemy and shoot him in the back.

REPLAYABLE

• Levels are short
• Levels have different objectives that require different approaches
• Levels are open ended and allow for different approaches
• End of level you are given a rating. You can replay it to do better. To get all perfects is fun and not hard.

All this makes for a short but replayable game

ASSASSIN

All these systems turn levels into small assassin puzzles. The game feels like a fast actiony Hitman

ACHIEVEMENTS

The game does achievements perfectly

• They teach you mechanics — melee, headshots, vents, etc
• They act as subobjectives for some levels so you do them in an interesting way
• Achievements give resources, so you will try to do most.

ACCURACY

Something cool the game does — your crosshair will be bigger depending on how far it is from you. You have a perfect idea what is your chance to hit at each distance.

DIFFICULTY

The base game has excellent difficulty. On completion you will unlock hard mode but it is too frustrating, ignore it.

CONCLUSION

Perfect Indie Gem

LINKS

Deadbolt on Steam

 

[niveaformen]

nice write up! Always interested in this as it was made with Gamemaker, something I've been tinkering with. Have you played Gunpoint, I think it has some similar elements and style, but requires more stealth and hacking of security.

 

[game_nomad]

nice write up! Always interested in this as it was made with Gamemaker, something I've been tinkering with. Have you played Gunpoint, I think it has some similar elements and style, but requires more stealth and hacking of security.

Gamemaker is amazing - simple, powerful, takes care of porting on various plaftforms for you. It is not only for indies. If you can do HD 2d art, it will work the same wonders

Gunpoint has more stealth and puzzles, less action and gore, less darkess, more British humor. Good game, but not my style. Tim Fransis, the authors is very funny dude with cool twitter

 

[niveaformen]

yeah ain't it! Gamemaker community really helpful too.
Cool, Gunpoint might be up my alley going by your description

 

[Helios]

I loved the game. The soundtrack is also amazing.